


anything past the horizon

by madanach



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Gen, Introspection, M/M, Transfer Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 10:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4475555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madanach/pseuds/madanach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were there when they were 19, young and nervous and giddy; now that Basti’s closed in on 30 and Lukas is about to cross the line, it seems appropriate for them to extract themselves from their teammates, leave in the early hours of the one day they don’t have to train until they drop and walk until they’re really and truly alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	anything past the horizon

**Author's Note:**

> it is basti's birthday and i will not stand for negativity and disrespect any longer

Lukas has been waiting for international break for months by the time they finally see each other again. He’d like to think the interest from Galatasaray has helped to even out his mood, but in reality it’s enough to be able to be back with the national team, find that constant amid the flux of it all. He’s glad to be getting out of Milan, though he’d never admit it, and familiarity is enough to heal those wounds remarkably well.

It keeps him awake too long the first night when he realizes that Basti showed up even more restless than he.

There’s no big indication of it, but Basti’s been out of it all week: not noticeable by Jogi, or anyone else, really, but he zones out at odd moments and bites the inside of his lip and keeps looking at his phone, reading but not replying, tucking it back in his pocket with a vague crease along his brow that smooths out carefully when the conversation’s turned back to him.

Lukas doesn’t say anything to him. Basti’s worry lines disappear when they’re together, and he’s been not-so-subtly seeking out time with him, less the nostalgic playfulness of Brazil and more some sort of reassurance. Whatever’s been haunting him pushes them closer together on the couch, makes him stay in Lukas’ room longer at night, deliberately prolongs the few short minutes between when they get their cleats on and when they step out on the field for training.

In Munich, he got used to reading Basti’s moods, and back then they came hard and fast enough that he could tell them apart like blinking — upset, angry, sad comma family, sad comma football, goofy, flirty, horny — and know exactly what to do to deal with them. Those lines blurred when they got older, Lukas being too far away to tell by the way he occupied his hands whether to look away at yelling or bite back, but now they’ve regained some sort of a pattern. It’s less practiced, less methodical, but it works just fine.

If Basti asks, he’ll say. That’s all he’s got to do. They’ve each got their support systems, but if Basti can’t talk to Tobi or Fips or his parents or Ana he calls him up and they cancel their dinner plans to sit on the respective floors of their respective bedrooms and talk until they can’t anymore. Easy.

So he just waits. He writes a laundry list in his head of things that could be bothering Basti and comes up with any number of possible problems, but — well, it’s not that he couldn’t ask. If they were younger, he would.

But they’re not, so when Basti’s shifting in his seat on the plane to Faro Lukas doesn’t poke him and ask what’s the problem is, doesn’t even wait until they’re safely at the hotel to pull him aside and ask him to spill it, just reaches over the armrest, digs Basti’s iPod out from wedged in the seat and changes the song to the first one he recognizes. Basti hits the soft of his arm against the inside of Lukas’ elbow gently and they stay like that, Lukas just far enough over to choose the music, until they land.

They were there when they were 19, young and nervous and giddy; now that Basti’s closed in on 30 and Lukas is about to cross the line, it seems appropriate for them to extract themselves from their teammates, leave in the early hours of the one day they don’t have to train until they drop and walk until they’re really and truly alone. Lukas looks back at their twin footprints across the sand and Basti shades his eyes from the sun.

“Sit?” He’s already kicked off his sandals. Lukas tosses his towel down next to him, watches as Basti spreads his meticulously.

“Jesus, it’s nice out,” Lukas says. He toes out of his flip-flops and drops his phone onto the crumpled pile of his towel, then dances on tender feet across the hot sand until he reaches the water’s edge.

“Is it warm?” Basti calls.

“Not really,” Lukas answers. He can’t bring himself to walk in, doesn’t want to sit in his wet shorts and have to wait for the sun. “Come find out.”

Basti scowls audibly, something Lukas would have sworn wasn’t possible until he’d met him, and Lukas hears him grumble as the beach burns his toes.

“Ah,” he says, coming to stand next to Lukas. The water laps up-down, up-down over their feet. “False advertising.”

“I know, right?” Lukas says. They’d ran laughing through the shallows more than a decade ago, but he can’t remember if the cold was why Basti tried to keep him under so long. It always seems warm when he thinks back.

He reaches up and splays a hand across Basti’s back, still looking down.

“Don’t,” Basti warns.

Lukas smiles and presses lightly, then looks over; Basti’s regarding him, eyes dancing though his lips are curved in a frown.

“Don’t,” he repeats. His skin is already sun-hot against Lukas’ palm, though all they’ve done is walk.

“It’d cool you down,” Lukas says. Basti wrinkles his nose, looks back at the horizon. Lukas drops his hand when the muscle memory of shoving Basti into the waves in Rio becomes a little bit more than nostalgia.

Basti kicks a foot, watching the fan of drops sprinkle into the water. “Later,” he says.

“Okay,” Lukas tells him, but when Basti turns back towards the towels Lukas dips his hands into the water and splashes a carefully-cupped handful against his back.

“Fuck you,” Basti says, and when he bends over to laugh the movement exposes the whole of his spine, the rivulets of water trickling down and disappearing under the hem of his shorts. Lukas spreads both of his hands wide across Basti’s back to stop them.

“You’re cold,” Basti complains, arching back enough that Lukas has to push him to keep walking forward.

Lukas reaches a hand around him and presses a couple fingers to his stomach. Basti shivers. “For once,” Lukas says.

In lieu of an insult, Basti tugs Lukas’ arm further, then uses the leverage to shove him down onto his phone-towel-shirt-hat pile. Lukas grins up at him.

“Getting old, old man.”

“Am I?” Basti raises his eyebrows, plopping down. His excessive neatness is a recently-acquired trait; Lukas doesn’t know exactly when it happened, which switch in his brain flipped that Lukas missed, but he shakes a few grains of sand off the corner of the towel like they’ve personally offended him and then shakes his head to match.

“Not that old,” Lukas says, pushing at the edges of his own towel until they form some sort of coherent shape. “Gray and decrepit, though.”

“Liar,” Basti says. He sinks back with a groan until his back hits the sand, then watches Lukas expectantly. Lukas grins and twists until he’s on his knees, pleased to see the way his shadow drapes far enough across the sand to block Basti’s eyes. “Oh, perfect. Don’t move.”

It takes a minute to set, the strange, empty silence of the beach making Lukas’ thoughts feel distanced. He can see the blinking of a few lone lights in the houses far in front of him, but no one else is near, though the sun is rapidly moving higher in the sky. Basti seems just as content as he to sit and enjoy the quiet. It hits him, yet again, how much they’ve grown.

“Lukas,” Basti says, and then, “Lukas,” again, when he doesn’t hear. “Come on.” His fingers scoot down to tug at the hem of Lukas’ shorts. Obediently, Lukas drops forward and falls onto his belly, spreading his knees and elbows like a starfish. His arm knocks Basti’s shoulder.

He was probably about 25 when he calmed enough to be able to sleep at the beach, suddenly able to lay in the warm sun for hours and let his body and face get pink. Now that Louis is older and more active his summer holidays barely have him catching a wink, so it’s understandable that his eyes droop after a few minutes, then shut. The line between asleep and awake is much more comfortable to walk when Basti’s snoring next to him, and he doesn’t realize they’ve both been dozing for a while until he looks sleepily over and blinks at the glaring red skin on Basti’s cheeks.

His laughing wakes Basti up, or maybe it’s the shirt Lukas balls up and tosses at his head-neck-shoulder area: either way he grumbles incoherently and drapes it full over his face, pretending to go back to sleep.

“You look like a lobster, man,” Lukas says, grinning. He can feel the exposed skin of his back threatening to go the same way; he rolls over and tilts his head toward Basti, still trying to get a glimpse of his features under the white cotton. The nap has left him sated and pleasantly warm.

“It’s my heritage,” Basti mumbles. “Schweinsteiger Pink.”

Lukas grins wider. He’s coveted Basti’s just-woken-up voice since he was eighteen, when obnoxious needling to get him to grumble and groan was still par for the course. It was even harder for him to decipher the tied-together words of his accent in the near-dark of dawn, and he’d go down to breakfast with ears trained to catch missed words that would end up losing entire sentences of their teammate’s clearer speech. They don’t always room together now, so he’s missed it.

“I’ve got a theory,” Lukas says. “Do you absorb the weather around you? Like a lizard,” and then Basti pulls the shirt off his face to scowl, so Lukas falls back into his grin and forgets the rest of his joke. “Just asking.”

“One,” Basti says, rolling over so he’s turned towards Lukas, “The term is cold-blooded, which you’d know if you went to third grade. Two,” he spreads the shirt out and then suddenly twists, pressing it over Lukas’ face, “You’re not funny.”

Lukas laughs, both of his hands tugging Basti’s down from his head but letting it stay, hovering, over his sternum. “Oh, so that’s what Louis is learning?”

Basti snorts. His hand drops down; he pushes the shirt over Lukas’ neck, draped like some sort of terrible scarf. “He’s too small to be that smart.”

“Hey,” Lukas says. “He’s smarter than you were.”

“You know how little that takes?” Basti says.

“Touché,” Lukas says, drawing out the foreign word until Basti quirks his lips and falls back down onto his towel. His hand drops onto the sand between them.

Basti waits a moment in that position, whole body curved towards Lukas, and then says, “Hey. How’d you like England?”

The question hangs in the air as Lukas exhales, shifts, and twists his neck just enough to get a good look at Basti’s face. His expression is carefully neutral.

That’s been it this whole time, then. Lukas mentally scratches out vague worries of Basti’s family, his relationship, his health — transfer nerves are more than enough to have hidden under your skin.

“I loved it,” Lukas says, though Basti knows this already. “Nice people. Terrible weather. The league is amazing.”

“Mmm,” Basti says. His eyes are somewhere far away.

“Go to Arsenal,” Lukas says. Basti hits him on the shoulder.

“I’m serious,” Lukas says. He lets himself smile; there’s a smirk on the corner of Basti’s lips, too, and the conversation seems like it needs some levity. Basti does enough stewing on his own time.

“Absolutely not,” Basti says airily.

“They’re a good team,” Lukas says.

“They treated you like shit,” Basti answers.

“Eh,” Lukas says, but he pulls the shirt off his chest and crumples it under his head as a pillow, rolling over. It smells like Basti’s sweat and skin. “Is it United?”

Basti nods. Not that Lukas expected anything different — he’s well aware of Basti’s allegiances, endured enough teasing when he was at Arsenal to figure it out even if he hadn’t seen Basti’s childhood bedroom before, where the only color interrupting Munich red and white was a few lone flashes of gold — but it’s crazy to think that talks have gotten this far and Basti’s stayed so quiet.

“You’ve wanted to go there since you were a kid,” Lukas states. Basti nods again.

“Van Gaal wants me,” he says. Lukas closes his mouth to wait for another sentence, but Basti just presses his lips together and looks down. It’s alarmingly uncharacteristic; Lukas’ ribs feel suddenly tight.

He knows exactly how Basti deals with tough decisions, and he’s willing to bet that with his manager, with Bayern, with his brother and his girlfriend and his own parents he’s taken a stance and hasn’t backed down. No hesitation, no complications. If he wants to go, he’s going, and to hell with anyone who tries to convince him otherwise.

No wonder he hasn’t said anything, Lukas thinks. Anyone back home would try to get him to stay.

“Are you excited?” Lukas says, and the relief on Basti’s face is staggering.

“Yeah,” he says, and there’s his smile again, the beautiful post-Rio grin that Lukas can’t ever get enough of, the one that says _everything was worth it_. “Yeah, God. Dude. Premier League.”

“It’s awesome,” Lukas says, matching his smile. “Great for when you’re tired of winning everything all the time.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Basti says, and laughs, shoulders shaking, eyes crinkling up. “You’re such an asshole, Jesus.”

“1. FC Köln would say otherwise, _schatz_.”

“My opinion trumps theirs,” Basti says. He wiggles a bit, kicking sand onto Lukas’ calves in the process. “Because of proximity.”

“So I’m only an asshole when I’m with you?” Lukas debates the merit of burying Basti’s shirt and making him wear a sandy, scratchy mess home, but decides it isn’t worth losing his pillow. “That seems unfair.”

“No,” Basti says. “You’re an asshole when I say you are.”

They’re losing the original conversation; as much as he loves trading mindless insults, he reminds himself that Basti almost certainly wanted to come out here to talk. When he tugs at the side of Basti’s towel Basti sobers instantly.

“Tell me about Manchester,” he says. He keeps his eyes trained on his own hands, on the exposed beach between them. Basti’s fingers are right below his own and they dig restlessly in the sand, lifting it up and letting it sift between the cracks, picking it up and repeating the motion.

Basti clears his throat. “The offer’s been open for a while,” he says, quieter. “I didn’t really consider it until this year. It was great, obviously, but.”

“But?” Lukas prompts.

“I don’t know. Now we’ve got the World Cup.”

Lukas smiles slightly. “Nothing’s impossible anymore.”

He tilts his head up at the sound of Basti’s quiet, happy chuckle. “Yeah, exactly.”

A horn honks on the road far above them; Basti lifts his head at it, then settles back down.

“A new challenge would be fun,” Lukas says. He considers the press of Basti’s lips, how it’s already softened since earlier.

Basti smiles at the word _challenge_.

“I’ve got the treble, right? That was the goal,” he says.

“That was the goal,” Lukas confirms, and thinks of when he left Bayern, how he can’t remember their conversation besides the anxious humming of his veins but somehow, even when Basti’s voice was rough, he still managed to pinch Lukas in the side and say _einmal Bayern, immer Bayern, eh?_

 _Fuck no,_ Lukas had said, but he’d still smiled wide at the stupid show of normalcy. It had helped, in some childish way, even though Lukas’ devotion wasn’t so much to Bayern as it was to the boy next to him, and his chest had felt a little lighter when he left.

It probably wouldn’t help to remind him. It feels too much like a long, slow separation when he thinks of it, and now, especially: first there were two, and then there were none. He’d always thought it was a fluke, not a prophecy.

“It’s not that I’m unhappy,” Basti says, like he’s read his mind. “I’m not — shit, I don’t know.”

Lukas shakes his head. “Don’t do that. Justifying it to yourself is the fucking worst.”

“I need to justify it,” Basti says insistently. Lukas scoots back so he can see him better and there’s something upsettingly earnest about his face, the kind of honesty that used to make him stay up for days at a time figuring out if a loss had been unjustly awarded or if they deserved their disappointment.

“Stop,” Lukas says. He reaches out and grabs Basti’s wrist, a mindless movement to demonstrate his sincerity, and Basti tugs at his fingers but not enough to pull fully away. “Like you said, you’ve got the treble. Hell, Basti, you’ve been there how many years?”

“Seventeen,” Basti says quietly. “Look, it’s not that. I know I’ve, shit. Done good by them. That’s not — I’m fine with that.”

Lukas runs through his mental checklist, all of the different things that make his stomach churn when he switches teams. The feeling of abandonment, by you or them. The goodbyes. The media circus, the long-ass tedious process, that constant voice in the back of your head saying _it won’t work, you’ve fucked up again,_ and then being in a new city with new people and having to live with it.

“You can be nervous, Basti,” Lukas says. Of course that’s it. “Jesus Christ, dude, you’re only human.”

“I’m,” Basti says half-heartedly. “I’m excited.”

“No, man, you’re excited and nervous. That happens. That’s every major match we’ve ever played.”

“That’s different,” Basti says, but his fingers loosen from where they had been clutched in a fist.

“Yeah, okay,” Lukas says, “You’re right, playing ninety minutes once is way different from moving to an entirely different country with a bunch of new people speaking a language you barely know. My bad.”

“Fuck you, Lukas.”

“Only if you admit you have feelings like the rest of us,” Lukas says. He’s relieved when Basti scoffs and rolls his eyes; they haven’t ever had a big fight, but all of the small arguments they’ve had have been when one of them has told the other something they didn’t want to hear. It hasn’t happened since the shitstorm that was 2012, but still, seeing Basti like this hurts him.

He waits anxiously, watching the worry lines on Basti’s forehead slowly fade, and then — surprisingly — Basti doesn’t even huff before smiling again, more genuine this time.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I don’t know. I’ll be somewhere totally new.”

“It’s terrifying,” Lukas says.

“Is it?”

“Yup.”

“Fun,” he says, but the smile’s still there, a little bit shy.

“Now, I know the first day of school is scary,” Lukas says, and then Basti rolls over onto his back and laughs until there are tears in his eyes. When he brings his hands to his mouth to cover his grin he tugs Lukas’ with him.

Lukas leaves his hand resting on Basti’s shoulder and feels the gentle shaking as his laughs slowly fade, as he tilts his head and Lukas’ view of his features is blocked by the glare of the sun. He squints enough that Basti notices and digs his sunglasses out of the sand at his side, holding them out.

“Nah,” Lukas says. “Thanks.” He’s still laying on Basti’s shirt and he doesn’t mind looking a little stupid with it draped over his head. Basti shrugs, knocking Lukas’ hand off his neck, and pushes them on his own nose.

“Give me your phone, selfie boy.”

Lukas snickers and pats around on the ground until he finds it, lodged under his thigh, and tosses it onto Basti’s stomach. The strangled _oof_ he makes gets Lukas to grin, and Basti says, “Good, stay just like that,” as he fumbles with the lock screen and switching the camera.

“Too late,” Lukas says, but he sits up on his elbow and smiles obediently. He snatches his hat up out of the sand before Basti can hand the phone back and knocks it against his temple until Basti relents and takes pictures with that too, sticking out his tongue.

“I’m waiting for my 7,” Basti says, placing the phone pointedly back on the exposed table of Lukas’ ribs. Lukas tilts until it slides off. The sand at their feet forms a loose pile as Basti kicks at it, then sits up and packs it closer together, making an uneven mound. It reminds Lukas of Louis’ sculptures on the beach after he’d watched Lord of the Rings, a hobbit hole that was more or less just a connection of hills that he stuck a stick in until they’d cracked. Lukas was never much of an architect, but he bets Basti made castles in the sand when he was young. It just seems like it’d make sense.

“Did you build castles as a kid?” he asks, spur-of-the-moment. Basti looks back in surprise, the brim of the cap shadowing his face.

“Sometimes,” he says, turning back to his work. “Tobi and I used to find insects in the sand and make little towns for them. Then I dug holes for a while.”

“And then?”

Basti shrugs. He sweeps the hat off his head and places it on the mound with a grand flourish. “Then I grew up.”

As he settles back down, digging his phone out of his pocket and angling it towards their feet and the far-off horizon, Lukas says, “And now you’re back where you started.”

A click. Basti looks at him.

“Oh, shit, I get it,” he says, after a moment. “Because of —”

Lukas’ smile is smug enough that Basti rolls his eyes.

The sun’s high overhead by now, and a family somewhere behind them is filtering onto the beach, kids yelling and laughing. Basti posts whatever he’s going to post and settles back down, and his even breathing lulls Lukas into a quiet rest. He pulls Basti’s shirt over his eyes and pretends he isn’t pretending that he’s closer than he is. It’s already the time they’re due back when Basti gathers his things and sits cross-legged in the warm sand; his hand on Lukas’ shoulder wakes him up.

“Up and at ‘em,” he says, but quietly, like he’s trying not to disturb him. The children in the background whoop loud enough to drown him out.

Lukas yawns, knocks Basti’s knuckles with his chin. “You always pick the worst times.”

“Believe me,” Basti says, “I’m not picking them.”

They walk far apart on the way back, watching their footprints extend behind them in the sand. Basti stays on high ground and Lukas lets his feet get touched by the waves, and when they reach the boardwalk back to the hotel the marks curve up symmetrically, last few feet closing the distance. Before Lukas can slip his shoes on, though —

“Take your shirt off,” Basti says behind him, dropping his towel and phone onto a bench.

Lukas fingers the fraying hem of Basti’s shirt, thin and worn and well-loved. “Why?”

“Because,” Basti says, and takes off his sunglasses. “You said we’re back where we started.” He takes a step backwards, bare feet sinking into the sand.

“Oh,” Lukas says.

“Didn’t you once call me a sore winner?” Basti asks.

The water’s ice-cold around their legs as they splash into it, wetting the hem of their shorts and making them shiver, but Basti cackles when Lukas gives in and dives, knees knocking against the bottom, and then comes up spluttering. He grins and gets an arm around Basti’s waist; Basti, laughing, follows him down.

Their skin warms in the sun on the way home. Basti takes back his shirt, but the memory of it lingers, like the rest of him.

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally posted on [tumblr](http://madanach.tumblr.com/post/124246642373/anything-past-the-horizon-football-rpf) right after the transfer announcement, but given the fact that i've had to unfollow my entire dashboard to get away from people being really unjustifiably mean, i figured now was as good a day as any to crosspost. i love these old ass men. 
> 
> beach fic obviously inspired by [this](https://instagram.com/p/5AoQ-fOJ7O/?taken-by=poldi_official) and [this](https://instagram.com/p/308Dppn554/?taken-by=bastianschweinsteiger)
> 
> title from [siken](http://chax.org/eoagh/issueone/siken.htm), because my dignity is more or less a very elaborate prank
> 
> as always: [tumblr](http://madanach.tumblr.com) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/anahaedra)


End file.
